6 people pulled alive from rubble in Turkey after 101 hours, Assad visits victims in Aleppo hospital
Turkish boy Poyraz is carried to an ambulance after being rescued alive from rubbles. Reuters
Rescue workers in Iskenderun, Turkey said six people were pulled from a collapsed building on Friday morning after spending 101 hours beneath the rubble. The six people, all relatives, were helped to survive by huddling together in a small pocket left within the collapsed structure, said Murat Baygul, a search and rescue worker. Relatives celebrated as rescuers pulled a teenager from beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey largely unscathed early Friday, but four days after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 20,000 hope that many more survivors will be found is running out.
Relatives celebrated as rescuers pulled a teenager from beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey largely unscathed early on Friday, but four days after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 20,000 hope that many more survivors will be found is running out. The rescue came even as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited the Aleppo University Hospital, the presidency said on Friday, his first reported trip to an earthquake-hit area.
The presidency shared images of Assad and his wife visiting people who were injured in the devastating earthquake which has killed thousands. Before dawn in Gaziantep, near the epicentre of the quake in Turkey, rescuers pulled Adnan Muhammed Korkut from the basement where had been trapped since the temblor struck on Monday. The 17-year-old beamed a smile at the crowd of friends and relatives who chanted "Adnan,” "Adnan,” clapping and crying tears of joy as he was carried out and put onto a stretcher.
"Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance. "Thank you everyone.” Trapped for 94 hours, but not crushed, the teenager said he had been forced to drink his own urine to slake his thirst. "I was able to survive that way,” he said. "I have a son just like you,” a rescue worker, identified only as Yasemin, told him after giving him a warm hug. "I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. I swear I did not sleep; I was trying to get you out.”
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the border region between Turkey and Syria, an area home to more than 13.5 million people, early on Monday morning. With morgues and cemeteries overwhelmed, bodies lay wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarps in the streets of some cities. Temperatures remain below freezing across the large region, and many people have no place to shelter.
The government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but was still struggling to reach many people in need. Mustafa Turan rushed to his hometown of Adiyaman from Istanbul hours after the quake struck to check on his relatives. He counted 248 collapsed buildings between the airport and the city centre. The journalist said that 15 of his relatives had been killed, and scores of people were sleeping outside or in tents. "At night, about 4am, it got so cold that our drinking water froze,” he said.
Turkey's disaster management agency said 18,342 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with nearly 75,000 injured. No figures have been released on how many have been left homeless, but the agency said more than 75,000 survivors have been evacuated to other provinces. More than 3,300 have been confirmed killed on the other side of the border in war-torn Syria, bringing the total number of dead to more than 21,600. Engineers suggested that the scale of the devastation is partly explained by lax enforcement of building codes, which some have warned for years would make them vulnerable to earthquakes.
The problem has been largely ignored, experts said, because addressing it would be expensive, unpopular and restrain a key engine of the country’s economic growth. Dramatic rescues were reported elsewhere, including in the city of Antakya, where crews saved a 10-year-old girl overnight and on Friday. Elsewhere in Hatay province, in the city of Iskenderun, nine survivors were located on Friday trapped in a building. Six were saved and work was ongoing to reach the others.
The death toll from the earthquake has eclipsed the more-than 18,400 who died in the 2011 earthquake off Fukushima, Japan, that triggered a tsunami and the estimated 18,000 people who died in a temblor near Istanbul in 1999. Some 12,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or sustained serious damage, according to Turkey's minister of environment and urban planning, Murat Kurum.
Associated Press
